Without much of an announcement Facebook has launched a revamped Places Directory which seems to target Yelp as their competitor. The new directory lets you run a search for a specific city or town and will produce a list of restaurants, hotels, bars, cafes, attractions, arts & entertainment, gyms, cinemas, schools and universities, theaters, supermarkets, landmarks, and much more.
The search results you get are generated from user ratings and friend suggestions and comments. The new Places directory taps into Graph Search, the Page Locations API and other elements of the Facebook platform. This gives the new Facebook Places a bit of a leg up over the existing Yelp directory since I immediately see reviews and recommendations from my friends rather than from random people.
